Given the recent unrest in the Mid­dle East and North­ern Africa I thought it wise to inves­ti­gate the sit­u­a­tion on the ground, first hand. Thus, as soon as the Egypt­ian demon­stra­tions began I hopped on a flight to Hawaii. It’s amaz­ing the clar­ity a fort­night loung­ing at Waimea Bay can bring to the tur­bu­lence of our times. Shave ice and Spam musubi reminded me, as they should us all, of the bless­ings we enjoy in Amer­ica. It is only from a priv­i­leged dis­tance that polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion and human car­nage can be prop­erly appraised. So called “embed­ded reporters” are sim­ply mis­guided; these cheap­skates need to stop spong­ing off our mil­i­tary for heli­copter rides, end their cozy battle-front slum­ber par­ties and go where the news is really made – the posh resorts and cleans­ing spas haunted by the powerful.

My wife and I were routed from Port­land through Los Ange­les and it was while await­ing our con­nec­tion at LAX that an insight into the Libyan sit­u­a­tion struck me: I was munch­ing ran­cid corn chips at the Con­course C El Gusto Can­tina ^[1] while watch­ing the fash­ion­able Ange­lenos scur­ry­ing past: sun­glasses! The key is Quaddafi’s Sunglasses.

A quick review of Jane’s Mil­i­tary Index of Despotic Fash­ion and Fight­ing Duds 2000–2010 con­firmed my sus­pi­cions. Janes Fight­ing Fash­ions In the his­tory of mod­ern total­i­tar­ian states, eye wear has proven a reli­able pre­dic­tor of crises behav­ior. Fanat­i­cal atten­tion to style is tan­ta­mount to polit­i­cal intran­si­gence. Why? Because the dic­ta­tor hid­ing behind designer lenses per­ceives him­self fore­most as a celebrity.^[2]

Con­sider these other examples:

An oldie but a goodie. The most recent to fall.

A symp­tom of advanced delu­sional detach­ment is to be found in total­i­tar­ian pro­pa­gan­dist imagery. When the fig­ure of the darkly bespec­ta­cled dic­ta­tor becomes iconic, his delu­sion has per­me­ated both the insti­tu­tional media’s and the pop­u­lar per­cep­tion of author­ity. In a fash­ion coup, the acces­sory merges with the man as the image of power. The despot can no more relin­quish his glasses than his armed guards. Sun­glasses, donned for anonymity, per­versely become the sig­ni­fier of pre­em­i­nence and recognizability.

The celebrity is the object of irra­tional ado­ra­tion and this unwar­ranted affec­tion attacks the indi­vid­ual like an encephalitic virus. Bestowed in the form of pop­u­lar ado­ra­tion to the celebrity/polit­i­cal power to the despot, the notion of dimin­ish­ing fame rapidly becomes unthink­able to the afflicted. The celebrity and the polit­i­cal despot retreat into delu­sion, a delu­sion shielded by bunker walls and tinted lenses. The most dan­ger­ous polit­i­cal wackos are always the most cog­nizant of their pub­lic image. The bet­ter dressed the dic­ta­tor, the more ten­u­ous his hold on real­ity. Con­se­quently they are the last to com­pre­hend their demise, the last to yield. They are the most dan­ger­ous — Quadaffi is sim­ply Char­lie Sheen backed by an army: “my peo­ple love me.”

1. ^[1] A restau­rant billed as “the home of the best Mar­garita in LA”; a out­ra­geous claim since I hap­pen to know that Chipol­tle on Sepul­veda has held this title since 2004. ↩
2. ^[2] They are all men with the pos­si­ble excep­tion of the late Benazir Bhuto ↩

Let us pro­claim our Faith…

We believe in one God

The Huk­ster almighty

cre­ator of bait & switch

and in Michael Jor­dan, his spoke­man son

who was con­ceived of the NBA, born of Wei­den & Kennedy

bat­ted, retired and was buried.

He descended into com­mer­cial obscurity

On the third day he rose again and ascended to the finals

He is seated at the right hand of the Father and from there he shall hawk to the quick and the dead.

We believe in the holy spirit

the holy clear­ance sale

the com­mu­nion of shoppers

the for­give­ness of debt

the resurec­tion of credit

and spon­sored life everlasting.

In the name of FuBu, the Swoosh and the Holy Gap

Amen

While floss­ing this morn­ing, I had an epiphany.

As an avid cyclist, I have for some time been con­cerned about the increas­ing inci­dence of “road rage” over the past few years. Last night I was read­ing up on cur­rent ideas con­cern­ing the cos­mo­log­i­cal infla­tion­ary model (par­tic­u­larly João Magueijo’s highly con­tro­ver­sial asser­tion that C may not be con­stant). As I wrapped a sec­ond strand of floss around my fin­gers to tackle a sesame seed lodged between molars it all coalesced.

I ≈ (Vp – Vmc)2

Where I is Irri­ta­tion, Vp is the max­i­mum poten­tial veloc­ity any par­tic­u­lar loco­mo­tive mode may achieve and Vmc is the min­i­mum con­stant velocity.

Irri­ta­tion is pro­por­tional (for­give the ≈, WP doesn’t have com­plete set of math sym­bols) to the square of the poten­tial veloc­ity minus the min­i­mum con­stant veloc­ity. Essen­tially, the faster your car the more angered you are by slow traf­fic. I shall refrain from any util­i­tar­ian or Marx­ist inter­pre­ta­tion (although the con­se­quences will surely tit­il­late social the­o­rists) and limit my com­ments to the exper­i­men­tally verifiable.

Con­sider the pedes­trian. Rarely is an ambu­la­tory excur­sion to the cor­ner deli delayed by any­thing more retard­ing than cross­walk, thus the min­i­mum con­stant is quite close to the max­i­mum poten­tial veloc­ity: Vp – Vmc is small. True, one may be annoyed occa­sion­ally by a tan­dem stroller monop­o­liz­ing the side­walk but such encoun­ters are brief and have a neg­li­gi­ble effect on one’s veloc­ity. Our for­mula sug­gests that pedes­tri­ans should have a very low irri­ta­tion num­ber and sure enough, there is no recorded inci­dent of a pedes­trian shoot­ing another because of side­walk rage.

Let us move on to cars: I drive an old diesel vehi­cle with tremen­dous torque but poor accel­er­a­tion and a mod­est max­i­mum cruis­ing speed. It is extremely rare that I find myself annoyed by trucks or buses ahead of me; indeed I some­times have dif­fi­culty keep­ing apace with them. But every­one in a Porsche Boxer or Audi TT who passes me is unmis­tak­able miffed^[1].

How about air travel? You might think that, since once an air­craft is aloft it trav­els con­sis­tently near its max­i­mum poten­tial veloc­ity, fre­quents fliers would be a most cheery lot. But, as we know, this is not the case. Remem­ber that it is the dif­fer­ence between the max­i­mum poten­tial and min­i­mum con­stant veloc­i­ties which is impor­tant. A plane trav­els very fast, but while you’re sit­ting in the board­ing area your veloc­ity is nearly 0: Vp – Vmc results in a large num­ber. I would fur­ther spec­u­late that all the tran­sit required to arrive at the air­craft should be accounted for in the value of Vmc but this will require fur­ther consideration.

Things get really inter­est­ing when we start talk­ing about inter­stel­lar travel and here is where Magueijo enters the pic­ture. If we were able to con­struct a ves­sel capa­ble of approach­ing lumi­nal veloc­ity (a.k.a. the speed of light) any pas­sen­ger aboard would lit­er­ally boil in their own bile long before reach­ing their des­ti­na­tion due to the stag­ger­ing irri­ta­tion induced. This would seem to rule out manned inter­stel­lar travel — at least for us; sen­tient alien species capa­ble of space travel would no doubt be intel­li­gent but might not nec­es­sar­ily pos­sess a ner­vous sys­tem sus­cep­ti­ble to irri­ta­tion. If how­ever, as Maguejo sug­gests, C is not con­stant and if it some­how were to drop it to near the max­i­mum veloc­ity of say a mail­man, then the sky’s the limit.

1. ^[1] A sur­pris­ing cor­rob­o­rat­ing exam­ple lies at the far end of the auto spec­trum. Accord­ing to U.S. Cen­sus life sat­is­fac­tion rank­ings Nascar dri­vers are among the hap­pi­est pro­fes­sional groups in the nation. This is likely because they nearly always travel at the max­i­mum veloc­ity of their vehi­cles. ↩